Emery likes cake

Our niece, Emery, turned 1 last week and we all celebrated it on Saturday, the 6th.  Andy and I don’t get a chance to visit family much so it was really fun to hang out with everyone and watch Emery devour cake.  Aiden and Emery have both gotten so big.  Last time I saw Emery, she was 6 months old at Kelly and Alex’s wedding. She spent most of the time passed out on my shoulder.  Now she’s walking and has a total personality, both stubborn and really funny.  Humor must run in the family because Aiden is a total ham.  He likes to burst into song and dance spontaneously.  He dances really well.  And I love to hear his stories about his animals and their adventures.  He still loves animals and will one minute be a little boy and the next a ferocious tiger.  Such an imagination!

Living far from family definitely has its disadvantages, one is not being able to just hang out and relax, enjoy a meal without a family event going on.  Luckily we got to do all three this weekend.  I wish it was a monthly occurence.  If only I could just teleport to MD/PA or had a magic closet that connected to a family member’s closet.  I could just pop in on daily life.  Have breakfast with the kids, go shopping with my sisters…they would probably get sick of me!  I think I need to get a teleport closet for Louisiana and West Virginia too!  How cool would that be?

Fayetteville, WV

Andy took me to Fayetteville, WV for our 2nd wedding anniversary.  He had discovered the town on his way to Hinkle Mountain one year and thought I would like it.  And of course I did!  Not only does it have a great pizza place called Pies and Pints, it’s also got a cafe in an old church, a Cajun restaurant, another cute cafe/diner, a candy store and a vintage ship called The Hobbit Hole.  It’s a basement shop, so you go down some steps and duck into a treasure trove!  I found a great sweater and some awesome vintage post cards of Würzburg, Germany.  My family lived there in 1994/95 so the postcards were a special discovery.
The bed and breakfast that we stayed at was an incredible mansion from the turn of the century called The White Horse Bed and Breakfastt.  We had pretty much to ourselves as we were the only guests.  You can check out photos here.
It’s a gorgeous house with a wide front porch to relax on and the requisite Inn cat to pet.  And after dinner at Pies and Pints, we chilled out in the cosy library.   I admit that I pretended just a little that it was our library.  Ah…a room just for books!  Heaven!

West Virginia, October 2010

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 2 years since we got married.  But it has!  This year, we went to West Virginia for our anniversary weekend.  Okay, so we admit that we may have let the date slip our minds and planned a WVU game trip  and then realized it was the same weekend as our anniversary.  Maybe we did that.  But what better way to celebrate a relationship than to have fun with your relatives?
Andy and I left North Carolina for the sunny mountain tops of West Virginia , Friday at noon.  We arrived in Charleston just in time for dinner with Jeff, Debbie and Chris (Uncle, aunt and cousin).  Yes, I have relatives in West Virginia too!  Very cool.   We had the most delicious dinner at ___ in downtown Charleston.  If only they lived here, we could laugh like that all the time.  The restaurant we went to was hip yet cozy, with a great menu.  I don’t usually like grits, but the ones that came with my trout were perfect, and everyone else’s food looked yummy too.
On Saturday, we were up at the crack of dawn.  Yes really,  I woke up at 6:30!  And we were out of Libby’s house and driving away by 7:30AM.  I think it was the earliest I have been awake in years.  We met up with Terry and Butch at a Sheetz in Morgantown and I have to tell you: everyone in the very busy Sheetz was wearing Navy and Gold WVU gear, including me and Andy.  I saw one woman in normal clothes and I thought, “why is she wearing those clothes?  She really stands out.”  And then we drove through town and arrived at our tailgating parking lot and seriously.  EVERYone was decked out.  I have never seen the like.  We were in a stadium with at least 55,000 people wearing the same colors  and cheering like mad.  They also kept doing this weird hand gesture (yes all of them)  that I could not quite catch.  Something about 3rd down, whoosh whoosh, another hand gesture.  No idea, it made no sense to me.  It was really exciting to be in a stadium with all those people though.  WVU lost the game but we had a great time anyways.

After the game, we tailgated a bit more, and then went to Muriels with Terry and Butch for dinner.  Muriels is a cute Italian restaurant that Terry had been driving by her entire childhood and always wanted to visit.  It was packed with WVU fans, but the wait was worth it.  And it was really nice to get a chance to have a relaxed dinner with Terry and Butch.

More on the rest of the trip to come!

Kelly and Alex sitting in a Tree. M A R R I E D.

Kelly and Alex’s wedding in May was quite an adventure.

It all started with a fun night of bachelorette debauchery in downtown Fredrick (Indian dinner and Dancing at NOLA) Friday night.  On Saturday we had the rehearsal, then Laura, Kelly, the kids and Andy and I all went to  Old Ellicott City to hang out.  Then we had a really great Rehearsal dinner at a cool restaurant on a river in Columbia.  That night we hung out at the hotel, with a lot of relatives, some beer and wine, putting together wedding booklets.  And then day of the wedding dawned.  I’ll skip over the chaos, and say that the ceremony was lovely and the church was beautiful.  The reception was full of LOTS of dancing, I’ve never seen so many guests dance.  It was great.
Here are just a few photos.  I’ll be posting more on our Smugmug site, though I admit that I did not get many good ones.  Too busy, sorry!

Interesting Fun Wedding Facts:
*Having all of my dad’s siblings together on the east coast was awesome.
*A wedding won’t be fun unless my cousin, Michelle and my Aunt Pam are there to help.
*My Mom and sisters are now required to plan and orchestrate Michelle’s wedding.
*Strangers are very kind, especially those who squeeze 4 bridesmaids in floor length royal blue dresses into a sedan’s backseat when their car breaks down.  And then deliver the bridesmaids to a lake in a park.  It is also lucky when you meet strangers going your way on a random 4 lane road in Columbia, MD.
*That anti-blister stick really does work.  Makes 4″ heels possible.

April showers

So, my baby sister, Kelly got married in May.  I know that its a bit late to post pics but I thought I’d share anyways.  These photos are my favorites from her shower and Emery’s Baptism in April.

So sorry that I am so lame about posting news

I’ll try to be better about posting things going on in our lives!

Autumn

This Fall was a busy one for the LaFleur family.  Aiden celebrated his second birthday in September, right after Jess and Anthony’s wedding.  And Laura and Kelly celebrated a new addition to their family!  Emery June Smith was born born 11/04/09 at 1:14 PM, weighing 7 lbs 7 oz.  I am so excited to have a niece, all those cute vintage dresses for her to wear!

And for the first time in a very long time, Andy and I went to MD for Thanksgiving.  The “kids” made dinner, which turned out to be very delicious.  It was great to see everyone again, 2 trips in one season is a rare treat for us (3 counting Christmas!).   We stayed with Laura and Kelly for the first few days, and got some time with them and the kids.  Aiden is incredibly imaginative, even singing his own songs and acting out animals.   And Emery is adorable, very relaxed for an infant.  Laura even vacuumed under her crib while she was asleep!  Since, Aiden likes to sing to her while she sleeps, Emery’s ability to sleep through anything will come in handy.  :)

I regret that I didn’t take pictures of the feast or very many pics at all.  Just a few of Aiden and Emery:

Andy and the Mountain

Andy turned 33 Tuesday and he celebrated first with a Monsonia practice and then with beers and food at Milltown.  I made him this cake.  It’s a mountain.  Yes that is beer fishing from the stream.  And there is a giant white wolf and a stag.  And a river that flows up and down the mountain.
Here are some pics:

happiness abounds

My youngest sister, Kelly, announced her engagement this summer to her long time boyfriend, Alex Vernet.  They got engaged in the North Carolina mountains, with Alex popping the question on his own birthday.  So sweet!

Kelly and Alex are getting married in may 2010 and Andy and I are really happy for them!

If you would like to see some of their engagement photos, click here.  Or you can visit their blog at http://alexandkelly.wordpress.com.

the Carrboro Artisan Market

My business partner, Rebecca and I are both very into hand made goods.  We carry a number of artists at our store: Roulette Vintage, and we both have our own hand made lines at the store.  We also recently started a store line, Roulette Remade for vintage clothes that we reconstruct and/or dye.  Rebecca had the idea to do a craft market in Carrboro, as a way to celebrate locally made goods and independent crafters.  Our friend, Sarah McLane organized the first Carrboro Artisan Market with us.

I’ll skip all the work and drama that went into making the market happen, and just point you to our website.  I’m still working on it, but doing the web design for the store and the market are my side projects.  

The day of the market dawned grey and misty.  I called my dad, just to shock him with how early I was up.  Rebecca and I were out bright and early, with A LOT of coffee in our systems and little sleep; waiting for the tent, tables and chairs to arrive.  I think we may have frightened Eric and Jody who came early to help set up.  They had not had the benefit of coffee.  Scott, from Open Eye (where Rebecca and I met) then showed up with more coffee, cheering our souls with the prospect endless coffee fueled fun chatter through out the day.    I will admit to some really fun giddy moments.

It does take more than a wet grey day to keep the people of Carrboro away from a craft market.  We set it up and they came.  It always amazes me how much people like to shop.  My friend Thomas was out in the drizzle with his t-shirts and people were just going through the piles of damp fabric, smiling with glee when they found the one they wanted.  I am that person too.  Andrea of mi scusi hand made was also in the drizzle and I was talking to her, realized my head was a bit cold so I bought one of her hats.  Very clever of me right?  I will admit right now that I was shopping with gleeful freedom.  Such fun!

Our friend, Michelle Coppedge Wallen, helped us at our booth, and our other friend, Mandy watched the store for us.  Misha arranged the music and came shopping for a “stage” outfit for her show that night.  It was the first Saturday in years that Rebecca and I were hanging out together outside the store, hence the giddy behavior.  Good times, good friends, good times.